In singer Dave Van Ronk’s memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, he tells about his experiences playing music in New York City in the 1960s and of those he encountered. He also writes fondly of his memories of the young Bob Dylan.
Writing about Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Van Ronk notes that he does not love all the lyrics. He reveals that the phrase “clown who cried in the alley” reminds him of a velvet painting.
But Van Ronk concludes that the overall effect of the song is “incredible.” He also explains that the tune comes from an old Anglo-Scottish Ballad.
“Lord Randall”
The English Ballad “Lord Randall” opens with similar a structure that Dylan would emulate in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” with the singer asking questions and then responding with answers. The song begins, ““O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son? / And where ha you been, my handsome young man?” Sound familiar?
Like Dylan’s song, “Lord Randall” is melancholy in both sound and theme. The ballad recounts a tragic love story. Lord Randall sings of a broken heart, and by the end of the song we learn that he is dying because his lover has poisoned him. Here is a performance of “Lord Randall” by UK artists Vicki Swan and Jonny Dyer at The High Barn on February 2013.
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
In Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Oliver Trager describes Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” as “”[a]s stark a piece of apocalyptic visionary prophesy as anything ever committed” to any media. It was unlike anything else Dylan had written up that time.
Dylan’s song features a conversation between a father and a son, with alternating descriptions of life and death. Some believe that Dylan started writing the surrealistic poem during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
In the liner notes to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan though, Dylan explained that each line starts a whole new song. He remembered: “[W]hen I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all these songs so I put all I could into one.”
Trager finds some “brightness” among the dark images of the song, including the final stanza when the narrator claims he will “tell it and speak it and breathe it/ And reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it.” It is an ending of defiance in the face of the darkness.
Here is Bob Dylan’s singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” from a 1963 performance at Town Hall.
I have always loved the song and found it powerful, but I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to hear it in the early 1960s coming from Dylan standing on stage in a club. When Van Ronk first heard Dylan sing it at the Gaslight, he writes, “I could not even talk about it; I just had to leave the club and walk around for awhile. It was unlike anything that had come before it, and it was clearly the beginning of a revolution.”
Do you agree that Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is incredible? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Inside Llewyn Davis opens with one of the film’s best musical moments. The camera simply focuses on the title character, played by Oscar Isaac, singing “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” at the Gaslight Cafe. Isaac’s performance of the song is mesmerizing. He immediately draws the viewer into the time and setting of the movie.
Hang me, Oh hang me, and I’ll be dead and gone; Hang me, Oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone; Wouldn’t mind the hangin’, but the layin’ in the grave so long; Poor boy, I been all around this world.
The song stayed with me long after the movie ended. One might argue that no other performance in the film matches it. Check out Isaac’s opening performance from Inside Llewyn Davis.
Versions and Sources of “Hang Me”
The movie performance made me curious to find out more about the song. The Coen Brothers movie is loosely based on the life of Dave Van Ronk. So the obvious first step for anyone interested in the film is to check out Van Ronk’s version of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.”
Van Ronk’s version is a wonderful recording and worth tracking down. Van Ronk’s ex-wife Terri Thai wrote in The Village Voice that one of the best things about the movie is that it will lead people to check out Van Ronk’s music.
You may find Van Ronk’s version of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” on the CD Inside Dave Van Ronk. Check it out below.
Van Ronk did not write the song. If you look for further information, many places just list it as “traditional.” The song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” however, has a long history that takes a number of twists and turns.
There are different variations on the song with different titles. These title variations include “I’ve Been All Around This World,” “The Gambler,” “My Father Was a Gambler,” and “The New Railroad.” Sometimes, the song is called “Cape Girardeau,” from the song’s line “I been all around Cape Girardeau.” Another version specifies the location of the singer’s last stand in “Up On The Blue Ridge Mountains.”
The Grateful Dead used the variation “I’ve Been All Around This World.” The band sang the song in a 1980 New Year’s Eve performance at the Oakland Auditorium.
A Grateful Dead fansite notes that the origin of the song is somewhat unclear. The first commercial recorded version of the song appears to be a 1946 single by Grandpa Jones, who later starred on Hee-Haw. But the song goes back further to a 1937 Library of Congress field recording.
A trip to the Library of Congress website leads to information about this first known recordings of the song. One early version of “I’ve Been All Around This World” (AFS 1531) is by Justis Begley. Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded Begley singing the song at Hazard, Kentucky in October 1937.
The Library of Congress lists another version of the song supposedly “sung” by a person named Dr. David McIntosh with a recording date of May from the same year, although I have yet to find more information about that version. McIntosh seems to have been a collector of folk songs, authoring books called Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks and Singing Games and Dances (1957). (Thanks to Elijah Wald in the comments for pointing me to the McIntosh listing.)
Interestingly, Begley, the man who made the other 1937 recording of this song about a man about to be hanged, served as the sheriff of Hazard. You may hear another Sheriff Begley recording on YouTube, “Run Banjo.”
Begley’s version of “I’ve Been All Around This World” is below courtesy of archive.org and thanks to Stephen Winick at the American Folklife Center for the link. At the end of the song, you can hear the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax referring to Begley as the “composer” of the song.
The line “hang me” probably derived from the American ballad “My Father Was a Gambler.” That song is about an unnamed murderer who was hanged in the 1870s. Like many other versions, the narrator in “My Father Was a Gambler” claims he has been all around the world as he states, “hang me, oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone.”
Below is a YouTube video of someone playing “My Father Was a Gambler.” The song title reflects a paternal gambler theme also found in “House of the Rising Sun” (“My father was a gamblin’ man / Down in New Orleans.”). A gambling father also appears in the Allman Brothers’ song “Ramblin’ Man” (“My father was a gambler down in Georgia”).
What Hanged Man Inspired the Song?
Unfortunately, sources do not disclose the name of the condemned man or men who inspired the various versions of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.” The book Outlaw Ballads, Legends & Lore (1996) by Wayne Erbsen claims that the song was inspired by a man hanged in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Some versions of the song mention that location.
Apparently the hanged man’s name has been lost to history. But the book claims that the execution occurred sometime during the decade of the 1870s. The author notes that the famous hanging judge Judge Isaac Charles Parker might have pronounced the sentence because he served as judge at that location during 1875-1896.
One may speculate further about the person who inspired “My Father Was a Gambler” and the “hang me” lyric. Examining a list of people executed in the Arkansas, one finds a large number of men hanged for murder in Arkansas in the 1870s. Most were black men or Native Americans (also illustrating the discriminatory way the death penalty is used).
If we try to narrow down the time period, the famous execution may have occurred sometime during 1873-1876. During that period, executions at Fort Smith were open to the general public. For these public executions, thousands of people could hear the condemned person’s last words.
But even if we narrow down the song’s inspiration to the years of public executions, it is still challenging to determine the name of the condemned man who inspired the “hang me” lyrics. For example, one may guess that the song could be about Sidney Wallace. As something of a folk hero, Wallace and his execution may have captured people’s imagination.
Or maybe the song is about Daniel Evans. He had connections in Missouri, which might have inspired the song’s reference to Cape Girardeau. Evans also joked about his execution, which might have made it memorable to a potential songwriter.
Or maybe the song is about either William Leach or William Whittington. Both of those men gave final speeches to a crowd blaming their vices and discussing their reform. Further, Leach’s lingering 10-minute hanging may have prompted extra attention. (See Roger Harold Tuller, “Let No Guilty Man Escape”: A Judicial Biography of “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker.)
A good guess is that John Childers may be the inspiration for the song because of his final request to be hanged. Childers spoke for sixteen minutes on the scaffold in 1873. Then his request came after the marshal made him an offer.
The marshal explained that he would spare Childers if the condemned man would reveal the names of his accomplices. Following his own code of honor not to rat on others, Childers swept his hand and asked, “Didn’t you say you were going to hang me?” After the marshal answered in the affirmative, Childers replied, “Then, why in hell don’t you!”
The Childers execution continued to attract attention after Childer’s death. Some claimed that Childers escaped. Others claimed that after Childer’s body fell through the trap, a bolt of lightening from a storm cloud struck the scaffold.
But we may only guess how much of the song we know today is based in fact. For example, singers may have added the gambling reference in some versions as a morality lesson for listeners.
The Song and Hangings Today
Other versions may contain clues about the origins or may just feature additional details added long after the execution. One of the versions called “Working on the New Railroad” refers to railroad work. Below, Crooked Still performs their version of “Working on the New Railroad,” which also has some of the “hang me” lyrics.
There are a number of other good versions of “Hang Me” and the various variations, including ones by Amos Lee and Yonder Mountain String Band. Also, reportedly, Bob Dylan performed the song during the 1990 leg of his “Never Ending Tour.”
The Deep Dark Woods made a lively version of the song the title track of their 2008 album, Hang Me Oh Hang Me. I like what they do with the song. Check it out.
While hangings may seem a relic of the past, hanging is still an option for executions in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington. In many ways, other current methods of killing prisoners also seem barbaric vestiges of the past.
States now have lethal injection as their primary method of execution. But such executions still are not civilized, as shown by a recent 26-minute execution in Ohio.
Whether or not we will ever see a song about lethal injection that rivals “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” may depend on how much longer some states continue to kill prisoners.
What is your favorite version of “Oh Hang Me”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
As noted previously on Chimesfreedom, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have been working on Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), a movie about the early 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene. As the Coen Brothers prepare for the movie’s Cannes showing, they have released a “red band” trailer (i.e., a trailer that is only approved for mature audiences). So if you are mature, check out the new trailer for Inside Llewyn Davis, which does not reveal too much about the plot of the movie.
As in the previous trailer we posted in January, the song playing in this new red band trailer is Bob Dylan’s “Farewell.” Dylan wrote the song in 1963 but it did not appear on any official record releases until 2010 on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964.
Oscar Isaac stars in Inside Llewyn Davis, which also features Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake. The film, reportedly roughly based on singer Dave Van Ronk’s book The Mayor of MacDougal Street, has taken awhile to arrive. But from the trailer, it might be worth the wait. You may see some still photos from the film on DigitalSpy.
Will you watch Inside Llewyn Davis? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Check out the new trailer for Inside Llyewn Davis, the upcoming film from the Coen brothers. The film about the 1960s folk movement is reportedly roughly based on singer Dave Van Ronk’s book The Mayor of MacDougal Street. The film, which is scheduled to open February 8, features Oscar Isaac in the lead role, and you will see John Goodman in the trailer too. The film also features Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and F. Murray Abraham.
Reports are going around, including from the Los Angeles Times, that the Coen Brothers plan to make a movie loosely based on 1950s-1960s folk-singer Dave Van Ronk and the New York folk scene. It will be great to see the Coens creating another movie based around great music like O Brother Where Art Thou?
If you watched Martin Sorsese’s documentary about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, you might recall that one of the most interesting interviewees in the movie was Dave Van Ronk. Van Ronk was a folk singer in Greenwich Village during the 1960s, and he was a friend and supporter to many of the singers who would go on to more fame than he achieved, such as Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Van Ronk passed away in 2002 while he was working on a memoir, which was then completed by his collaborator Elijah Wald. The book, which will be used by the Coens, is titled after one of Van Ronk’s nicknames, The Mayor Of MacDougal Street.
One of Van Ronk’s classic recordings is of the song ‘Green Rocky Road.”
When I go by Baltimore, Ain’t no carpet on the floor. Come along and follow me; Must go down to Galilee, Singin’ green, green rocky road, Promenade in’ green; Tell me who ya love, Tell me who ya love.
[UPDATE: The movie became Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).]
What do you think about the plans of the Coen Brothers? Who should play the Van Ronk character in the movie? Leave a comment.
In singer Dave Van Ronk’s memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street
. Check it out below.
(1996) by Wayne Erbsen claims that the song was inspired by a man hanged in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Some versions of the song mention that location.
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